Hey, don’t worry, it’s only 72 days before the start of the Championship season.

Sounds like a long time doesn’t it? The football-free summer stretches out in front of us like the long smooth legs of a supermodel on the beach of our existence. Possibly. June and July is one long blank on the calendar. When your life revolves around football, the summer feels weird because all your regular routines and support systems are removed from your life.

You hit a groove during the season, and you always know where you are. There are things you always do, people you always meet around matchday. Things happen to the same timetable for months and months. Plus, there’s football on the TV to soak up all your spare time and that in itself has its own routine. Monday Night Football, Soccer Saturday etc etc.

We all need these habits because they form the skeleton on which we build the flesh of our lives. But now the summer is here, we’re all at a loose end, desperately trying to get a hit of football, like an auld gadgee sucking hard on the last of his roll-up.

It’s a time of year many a football fan worries about. Without week-to-week football what do you do? What do you talk to your mates about? Oh god, you might have to start talking about politics, or worse still, your feelings. You might have to start talking to the kids, or even to your partner. No good can come from that. Help!!

When I was a kid growing up in the 70s, we couldn’t afford proper holidays, we just had days out at places like Seaton Carew, Marske or in Preston Park. Occasionally, we’d get the train to Whitby and that was genuinely like going abroad. Everyone talked differently, for a start, and you felt so far from home. They were more simple times and weirdly we seemed happier for having less choice.

If you only had money for the bus to Redcar, then you didn’t worry that you weren’t going to Spain or Florida, you just went to Redcar and made the best of it, usually by kicking a football around on the beach for six hours, getting wind burn, a shard of glass in your foot and then going home again. Brilliant.

But in those more simple days, an important part of every summer was going to pre-season friendlies. These days a lot of clubs play in money-spinning games in the Far East or America but I always liked going to see the Boro play the likes of South Bank, Hartlepool or even Port Clarence. The pre-season traditional game against York City is always something to look forward to. We played them in early July last year and won 6 - 0. It was our best result of the season! Lord, it would never be so good again.

Boro's Harry Chapman fends off the York defence during a pre-season friendly

There’s always a slightly giddy feeling to games of football played in the July sunshine. The whole experience is slightly transgressive. You stand there in empty grounds with a few souls and all know they are on their football holidays. The fact there’s nothing on the games themselves just makes them all the more enjoyable. There’s no stress or worry. Ticket prices are low or non-existent. But importantly it is still live football and it is part of the new season which you’re already jonesing for.

We played eight pre-season games last year and only lost one, to Real Betis. If you saw any of those games - admittedly three were in Marbella and one in Udine - you saw our best football of the whole season!

When Mogga was manager of Hibernian, for a couple of years we regularly played them in July. As I live in Edinburgh, I’d always go along. In Scotland, the summer lasts about four hours, during which you take off your balaclava, undo the top toggle on your duffel coat and scrape off the thick layer of goose fat.

Mogga at Hibs

It was on one such rare warm afternoon that we played Hibs. There were a couple of thousand Hibs fans at Easter Road and about 75 from Boro most of whom looked a bit sleepy, possibly due to large intake of summer refreshments. The hardcore of the Hibs fans spent the entire 90 minutes taunting them and inviting them to come and have a go if they thought they were hard enough. Naturally enough Boro fans ignored them, in the way a sleepy old dog ignores an overactive puppy. But they seemed to take it very seriously. Quite rightly, we didn’t. That’s no way to behave during a pre-season friendly. They should be treated like a vacation, like a luxury before the season’s hardships.

So best of luck coping with the next 72 days. Watch any and every bit of football you can. Try and pretend you are a well-adjusted member of society and have other interests in life. I know you don’t, but c’mon, for 72 days, let’s all just pretend.